Color Masking in PhotoPaint

**sallybode** · 03 July 2006, 01:31 AM

I was doing some tutorials on color masking, didn't really know what it was. It is like masking on steroids. Very good for dropping out the background of pictures with a mulitple hue background.

Sometimes a picture may have some interest to it, but the remainder is either garbage or is poorly exposed and you lose the fun of it.

Substituting a background that more suits your purpose isn't all that hard. It becomes an artistic composition, adding lens flares and special effects typography. For a long time I did all my image editing in Photoshop but as I have tried to increase my efficiency, I decided to grit my teeth and learn PhotoPaint so that I could actually produce something that I could be proud of. It has many similar features to Photoshop but it has some different approaches but also some tools Photoshop doesn't have. There is a ton more lens flare effects and the selection tools, I actually like better.

The retouch brush is really fast and gets the jobs out quickly.

If you haven't learned color masking yet, give it a try.

**sallybode** · 03 July 2006, 03:00 AM

This was masked with cutout lab. The rest is my imagination and the ability of PhotoPaint.

**parahandy** · 03 July 2006, 09:35 AM

Sally you can certainly be proud of your efforts, very striking and dramatic colouring.
***** Norman.

**molucca** · 03 July 2006, 01:57 PM

I remember going on a trip one time. The posters looked very dramatic.

Looked different when I got there. Now I know why.

Rich

**Grafixman** · 03 July 2006, 02:28 PM

Hahaha.

The truth in advertising.

**sallybode** · 03 July 2006, 05:29 PM

Hey, I am among other things, an advertising artist, and I stay working because I schmooze the customer really well.

**sallybode** · 04 July 2006, 02:56 AM

Some vacations are better than others. There's the one you took and the one you make your friends believe that you took. After all, you don't have to live with the ones you were with when you were on vacation.

Ah, Bubba Gump, the shrimp was good and the waiter really cute. He got a good tip.

**RedWombat** · 04 July 2006, 12:15 PM

Wow Sally, those are great!!!

I love the Tropical Sunset one, very nice effects in the sky.

Thanks for sharing!

**sallybode** · 04 July 2006, 08:07 PM

Yes, as to what Gman said elsewhere of the crudity of the PhotoPaint interface, it is different, but it is based on the speed of keyboard shortcuts. DRAW and PhotoPaint interfaces are open to customization. So just because it appears one way, doesn't mean it couldn't be otherwise.

Of course, having worked both in programs with floating palettes, having a palette that is contractible is better. It is interesting that InDesign uses this approach now. It is more efficient.

Much of the organization of PhotoPaint remains as it was I am sure for the benefit of those who have used it for years. I, myself, learned how to use both Illustrator and Photoshop and became proficient at them before using DRAW and PhotoPaint. I have spent time reorganizing DRAW's interface, basically adding toolbars which incorporate the scripts I have collected or written myself to make my work more efficient. All of what we are dealing with is indeed what one script can do and forget that we are trying to get the tools to resemble their physical counter parts. As I have said before, when I approach these programs as they expect to be used, I get very few problems or crashes. In comparison when I started with DRAW I was using 9.0 having been using Illustrator 8 and found Illustrator a stable program and 9.0 a very buggy one just because I was trying to use the tools as I did in Illustrator. I still have 9.0 installed and use it occasionally now and have zero crashes, or virtually so. And now because I've more or less been out of the workflow of Illustrator, go back to it now and find its interface retarded. It is allot what you are used to.

For example: tone curve, when used in DRAW and PhotoPaint, works smoothly; used in PhotoImpact, it is like my mouse has lost half of its finesse and it moves like Windows 3.1. However, when compared to Photoshop, there are things I find I don't like there too. But I know how to work around it. If you stay with the learning curve on PhotoPaint, it is a powerful program that can do just about anything. I do find that the help files in the program do not always tell all the steps and in fact may give the steps to using a function from an earlier version of DRAW or Paint that is no longer supported. Case in point, in DRAW 12.0 you could rotate the direction that both artistic and paragraph text types, instead of horizontal, you could rotate it and type it vertically, not right to left and not for a book spine either. And the directions in X3 are not something that X3 even has. But I live with it and don't say "let's chuck it, it still has bugs in it."... because like me, I am a work in progress and I have yet to get a hands on all of the reasons I do and behave as I do. Consider the problem of artistic block such as writers also get more commonly known as writers block, you just get stymied and cannot motivate yourself and something comes along and zoom, off you go, learning like crazy again.

It takes energy to complain about any given problem, and it also takes energy to solve it, usually much more but in the long run the second path is much more rewarding to everyone. True, not everyone is going to be a trouble-shooter and even so, one's horizons are limited to several.

Still the affordablity of DRAW and PhotoPaint and the number of spin off applications for targeting sublimation, vinyl cutting, sand blasting, sign making, embroidery, technologies which keep people employed, is inspiring.

I am going to give the problem of the PhotoPaint interface and see if the interface cannot be customized like DRAW can.